My main focus is reviewing manga and anime, but I also review Japanese literature, movies, and videogames. Basically, if it has anything to do with Japan, I'll talk about it, along with a dash of Korea and China.

Manga review of Eden Volume 11 by Hiroki Endo. Translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian. Originally published in Japan by Kodansha. Published in US by Dark Horse, $12.95, Rated Mature 18+.

The storyline that started 4 years after the first story arc continues in Eden volume 11. A shaky alliance has been formed between Elijah, Miriam Arona, and a Propater investigator named Wendy McCall. Elijah is in it to avenge Manuela's execution. Arona, a cop, is in it because the same guys killed her partner, who was Helena's boyfriend. Wendy McCall has been sent to find out about some shady connections between factions of Propater and the Wilhelm Corporation, a bio-electronic arms manufacturer. None of them want to stop with the actual killers. They are small fry. Instead, the trio wants to find the big wigs who ordered the hit. The trail takes them all the way from Peru to Australia. Unknowingly, Elijah is coming closer and closer to his missing sister, who was kidnapped a couple of volumes back, and is being held by Propater, along with Maya, a complex artificial life form that has the ability to communicate instantaneously with the emerging intelligence of the Disclosure Virus. And speaking of Maya, do you remember when Elijah made a copy of the AI in the first volume or so of Eden? It has been implanted into a cyborg body of a school-age girl and named itself Letheia Aletheia and joins Elijah on his journey to Australia. The Disclosure Virus is becoming more and more powerful and is taking over more and more cities. Now, a giant colloid has appeared in Australia as well, and Kate Mishima takes a scientific team into its bowels to investigate, and perhaps even communicate with the mind of the virus.

I guess I'm getting used to the whole 4 year flash forward deal, because I enjoyed this eleventh volume much more than than the last. Maybe it also has to do with the fact that Endo has finally gotten back to the sci-fi roots of this series after digressing into a long period of gang violence and sex. It's not that the last volumes haven't been awesome in their own right, but a lot of it could've happened in the present day and didn't need such a remote future tag. But in some ways, that's what I like about Hiroki Endo's writing. He doesn't take his sci-fi elements to unbelievable extremes. He simply extends ideas and technology we already have instead, much like Ghost in the Shell. You don't have anything like hyper-spatial travel, galactic empires, or hostile aliens coming to invade like a space opera. Instead, Endo focuses on characterization. That's why I was so upset with the killing of Helena. She played such a big part in Elijah's life and was so important to the plot, and Endo gunned her down just like that with no rhyme or reason as to why she and Elijah broke up. It just seemed like a cheap theatrical trick designed to shake up the reader. Still, I have confidence that Endo will win me back over in coming volumes.

I also don't know why Dark Horse took so long to put out this eleventh volume. Volume 10 came out way back in May 2008! And there has always been a darkness about this title coming from their company, as if its cancellation is always an eminent possibility. I hoped Dark Horse saw that this title reached the New York Times bestseller list for manga the week it was released. That's what I hate about these companies. They don't give you status reports or say a title is cancelled. They just let titles drift into oblivion and show no respect for the fans. Can anybody tell me what happened to Octopus Girl or Reiko the Zombie Shop? As far as I know, those titles are on "hiatus". Why can't they just say CANCELLED!? If it takes almost a year to publish each volume of Eden, give the license to Del Rey, who would treat the title with the respect it deserves. I'm talking about the big wigs at Dark Horse. It seems as though the staffers that actually deal with Eden really love the title. Kudos to Kumar and Steve for doing such a brilliant job with the translation and the lettering.